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However, Elayne was a fully functional channeler by the end of TSR, and could split her flows many ways. She was also as strong in the Power as Liandrin, the strongest of those BA, and yet her training was minimal.
The Companion says splitting flows is a matter of practice, and explicitly not about strength:
Early on, Egwene channeled two flows for the first time; that is, she wove flows to do two different things simultaneously. That was something most Aes Sedai could not do to any large degree. It had nothing to do with strength, or even knowledge, but rather a type of dexterity developed through learning-by-doing. It became more difficult to learn the longer one waited to learn. Working two flows was more than twice as hard as working one; working three much more than twice again working two. Rand could work a huge number of flows.
Aes Sedai don't typically make Novices try many things. So they start learning to split their flows very late. Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne didn't wait, so they do much, much, better. Egwene, of course, practices a lot, so she went way ahead of the others.
I do still think that strength gives you an affinity with saidar/saidin - I would even call it kinship - that allows you to weave it easier and progress faster. Egwene is the same and there many examples, though I don't like to use her as an example because I think she has rare innate skill and strength with saidar and the five flows. Alivia and Nynaeve can both reproduce weaves after seeing them once.
Copying weaves after seeing them once is pretty common, especially among Aes Sedai. It is rare in Novices, but many Aes Sedai we see pick things up really quickly, no matter their strength.
I'm not saying that weaker channelers can't be skilled. I'm saying they have to work and practice harder. Channeling is probably like intelligence. If you're clever you pick up things easily, but less clever people need to work harder and they eventually come right.
Yeah, I disagree. The Companion says explicitly that someone very strong can be very unskilled, and I believe that to be true. Skill is distributed all over the strength scale. We know Sorilea, weak as she is, is very skilled.We've seen it with others too. So no, I don't believe its true that skill goes with strength.